Thank you so much, Blinky, CQ (PM me, girl when you get a chance!), and PB! I kicked my training into high gear this week, seeing as how I'm just five weeks out from heading to Spain for the World Championships. I feel as though a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders with this win. For the first time, I am able to step foot into a gym and train my butt off while feeling like a champion. I feel like I can do no wrong with my physique as long as I stay true to my values and my ideals, which is what I have done ever since I switched to bodybuilding.
Do you know that the first time I stepped on a national level stage, I was in the last call out? Sandy Ranalli told me, "You need to eat and put some size on your body; you're too tiny." I walked onto that 2002 Junior Nationals Figure stage with glutes more striated than the bodybuilders, and I was slapped on the wrist for it. Do you know that I never did win a single figure show? That all three of my wins have been in bodybuilding? I tried desperately for years to fit the figure mold, and I finally realized last year that the only mold I would ever fit is the one I created for myself. And so I switched back to what I truly wanted to do: bodybuilding.
Between the prep for Team Universe and this current prep for Worlds, I have never been so relaxed and at ease with my body and my workouts. I have a newfound trust and sense of confidence in myself.
All I can say to other girls who have dismal placings in figure or feel they are out of place in one division or another of this industry: do what is right for your heart and your peace of mind. At the end of the day, you are the only judge that truly matters. I waited seven years to earn a national level win, and damn...it was worth it. And all because, in the words of Elvis, "I did it my way."
